Sanjay Gupta tries hand at fiction

Dave Rosenthal

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the Atlanta neurosurgeon who has developed a high profile as CNN's chief medical correspondent, has penned a novel in his spare time. But in true multi-tasker fashion, Gupta has made sure that "Monday Mornings" is more than a book -- it's being turned into a TV pilot.

In an interview with the network, Gupta said the book, released today, was not driven by a particular message. But he wanted to explore the morbidity and mortality meetings that hospitals use to review mistakes, while highlighting the gap that has developed between patients and their doctors, while

He told CNN that "there has been an erosion of the patient-physician relationship over the past couple of decades. There's been an increasing lack of trust. Doctors and the whole health care structures are seeing so many patients on any given day, there's so little interaction."

In an interview with PR.com, he also reflected on the title of the book -- and why it wasn't appropriate for the TV show: "[W]hen you think about Monday morning quarterbacking you think about people reflecting and trying to do a little retrospective, in this case with some particular events, but it could be with their own lives. You also have an aspirational quality because Monday morning is a beginning, not an end. ... But here is the funny reality of this sort of thing. It’s confusing to have a show called ‘Monday Mornings’ on a Thursday night.”